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Tuesday 25 October 2022 – 7.30 for 8pm – £5/£3

Venue: The Bell, 50 Middlesex Street E1 7EX (Tubes: Liverpool Street, Aldgate, Aldgate East)

 

‘I was Satan’s roadie’ – Tracking the Devil in English local lore

According to legend, the English landscape – so calm and welcoming on the surface – is really the Devil’s work. Throughout the country, local lore describes the infernal labour with which great rocks were hurled into place, hills heaped up and valleys carved out. That hideous strength laid down great roads in one night, spanned impossible gorges with slender bridges and left scars everywhere as the hard stone melted like wax under the tread of those burning feet. It sounds terrifying, and yet popular tradition always countered the hellish threat with a happy ending. Folklorist Jeremy Harte has travelled to the Devil’s Chimney and his Cheeseknife, his Parlour and his Punch Bowl, to find out where these subversive stories really come from. His new book Cloven Country reveals a folk Devil rooted in pantomime rather than piety, a vast lumbering ogre whose menace is outmatched by the quick wits of humankind.

Tickets £5/£3: https://www.wegottickets.com/event/555567/


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